Niall – and Kathleen too – lets not confuse “identity” and “profile.”

With or without the Web, I have profiles in many many places; people always have had. A profile (think of the metaphor behind the word) is a particular view of who I am created for a particular purpose. The description of me on the jacket of one of my books, like the description of me at http://www.connectbeam.com, is a single instance description. I met Kathleen Gilroy last week for the first time (and not face to face); if someone asks her about me next week, she’ll have something to say — that too is a ‘profile.’

Even – and maybe moreso! – the word identity is subject to this problematic use online. People write about the subject as if before the Web ‘identity’ was a simple thing! Not just my profile, but *who I am* changes depending on when and from where someone looks at “me.” And the question of *where* my identity lives on the Web seems equally confused. In the everyday world before the Web, there was no one place my identity lived; there still isn’t. My identity is who I am; it lives in me and in my acts and nowhere else.

Instead, what is required are tools that allow us to aggregate our online selves – wherever that might be and whatever form it may take.